March 19, 2009

Welcome to the Bailout Cafe

Hi! I'm Elizabeth, your server! I'll be taking care of you today! Owl Meat is at his entertaining best with today's Funtastic Thursday guest post. EL

Welcome to the Bailout Cafe. Here are today's specials:The Warren Buffet – An unlimited wealth of victuals but about 50 percent smaller than last year.

The Chuck Wagon Executive Bonus Lunch – If you blew your lunch money on strippers, scratch-offs and Bolivian marching powder futures, just order anything you want and it's on us! After we bring it to your table, manager Chuck Grassley will offer you two choices: Give it back or commit ritual suicide. If that doesn't appeal to you, manager Chuck Schumer will just take it off your plate and charge you for the grease stain. Then the Chucks will give you atomic wedgies and ride you out of the café like donkeys. ...

The Bernie Madoff Sandwich – You supply your own bread, lettuce and cheddar then we stuff it full of bologna and put it in the window to attract other customers. Tell all your friends! Warning: Not kosher, but that should be obvious, right?

The Benjamins Bernanke Nachos – Special discount this week. Throw your Benjamins at the wall and see what sticks. Do a shot of tequila. Repeat until everything looks all pretty and fuzzy. What's the discount rate? It doesn't matter, just shut up and drink.

CNBC Sundae – Rocky Road topped with refried nuggets from dubious sources. I scream, you scream, we all just scream.

Maria Bartiromo – A half-baked tart served in a shallow dish drizzled with Money Honey.

NASDAQiri – It's easily shaken and goes down fast.

The Raging Red Bear – An exhilarating cocktail of Red Bull, absinthe, habanero juice and spider venom that will take you on a hallucinatory roller coaster ride leaving you dizzy, broke and slightly Marxist.

Knight in White Satan – In honor of financier Sir Robert Allen Stanford, the first American to be knighted by the nation of Antigua and Barbuda. An exquisite melange of the finest Barbudian rums and fresh squeezed tropical fruit juices. Naaaahhhhhh, it's just dish water and grenadine. LOL, suckers!

Comments

The Alan Greenspan Salad -- Spring Greens freshly procured from the free market and tossed exuberantly with 1% Ayn Ranch Dressing (may contain peanuts and derivatives). Served with a gold standard fork, the taste will leave you in shocked disbelief. Goes well with our Freddie Mac and Cheese.

I forgot to mention that I am taking suggestions for names for my exuberant mascot above. Happy flaming banana guy with hula hoop is a bit cumbersome. The person who suggests the winnning name will get a secret prize.

I couldn't pick a place to cut this, it just seems so correct in explaining how I think we all feel right now. Sad Cafe, by the Eagles

"Out in the shiny night the rain
was softly falling
The tracks that ran down the boulevard had
all been washed away

Out of the silver light the past came softly calling
And I remember the times we spent
inside the Sad Cafe

Oh it seemed like a holy place
protected by amazing grace
And we would sing right out loud the
things we could not say
We thought we could change this world
with words like "love" and "freedom"
We were part of the lonely crowd
Inside the Sad Cafe

Oh, expecting to fly,
we would meet on that shore in the
sweet by and by

Some of their dreams came true,
some just passed away
And some of the stayed behind
inside the Sad Cafe.

The clouds rolled in and hid that shore
Now that Glory Train, it don't stop here no more
Now I look at the years gone by,
and wonder at the powers that be.
I don't know why fortune smiles on some
and let's the rest go free

Maybe the time has drawn the faces I recall
But things in this life change very slowly,
if they ever change at all
There's no use in asking why,
it just turned out that way
So meet me at midnight baby
inside the Sad Cafe.
Why don't you meet me at midnight baby,
inside the Sad Cafe"

Real life is just one layer of my existence. There are always a few others competing for head space. I was going to question Christa about who these other supposedly equally funny people are but super-awesome kind of balanced that out. My real life is a kind of inverse Platonic shadows on the wall kind of thing where the observable world is weak material version of the twelve ring circus in my head. Mmmm, mini peanut butter cups.

I just had a dream that I flew a plane (I have a license, expired) to Iceland where I got a really good haircut at Neal's Iceland branch, which was run by the owner of Minato's. Go figure. While there I had some really good sushi next door but the service was terrible.

So Lissa, have you ever had sushi in Iceland? It's a compeltely different fish-reality there. Because of the super-freshness and cold cold water the fish seems to lack flavor at first. Then you realize that you are dealing with a world of flavor that is very subtle and complex without the noisy quality of warmer water or less fresh or farm-raised fish. Ahhh, it's amazing. And I can't imagine really bad service there either.

Now if only you could get a good haircut and sushi in one place in Baltimore. Maybe not.

Are you threatened by Suze Orman because she's a lesbian? She's a lot smarter than you are. Is that sandiwch supposed to be some kind of juvenile sexual innuendo? Grow up. You're not funny, just hateful

Suze Orman is a lesbian? *sigh* Yet another successful woman who will never date me.

(At least, I assume she is successful, since you all seem to know who she is, and I think I saw her name on a best seller list once.)

Owlie, I didn't have sushi in Iceland, but I had some most excellent sushi in Halifax. The chef was thrilled that I wanted to sit at the bar and had a (small) clue about how to eat it properly, so he kept serving all this amazingly fresh stuff to me. I don't even like shrimp, but the small raw ones he served were sweet little worms of goodness.

"Now if only you could get a good haircut and sushi in one place in Baltimore."

The closest I can think of is this combination Barber/Bait and Tackle Shop up in Cecil County. It's not exactly a good haircut and sushi, but you can get a cheap hair cut and some minnows there.

Rest assured, this is a real place. I'm not making this up. I used to take care of both my hair and my fishing license there until my girlfriend -now wife- persuaded me that whitewalls were unbecoming on me.

Joyce - I do believe I read somewhere that both Cat and her partner are pregnant. And they already have 2 children. I don't think I made that up. Who knows, maybe it was a dream. I have been having some weird ones after the " I like my woman the way I like my cheese" statement.

Trixie, I read the same thing, I believe on After Ellen. If you read that site and haven't yet, you should check out the "facebooks" for this last season of the L Word. Much better than the last season of the L Word!

I stumbled up on this and remembered that someone mentioned Atlas Shrugged in this post. It was Lunatic-Fringe Laura Lee, who outsmarted me with her Ayn Ranch Dressing.

I must confess that I have never read Rand and am only familiar with her peripherally, including an article in the NY'r, sneering at the doucheknob Young Repubicans in the Hopkins Ayn Rand Club (really) and several viewings of The Fountainhead with Easter Island emotitron Gary Cooper. Brad Pitt is rumored to be reprising the role of Howard Roarke. Now that's a horse of a different color.

Anyway here's something on Atlas Shrugged and "this economy" from one of my favorite blogs Freakonomics:

From recession-culture trends we’ve written about on this blog lately, a recession icon of sorts emerges, wrapped in a Snuggie, puffing on a pipe — and now with a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged on his lap.

The Economist reports that the book’s sales rank on Amazon is far above what it’s been in previous years (and briefly topped Obama’s The Audacity of Hope).

Furthermore, says The Economist, data from TitleZ.com show recent sales spikes of the book coinciding with major political events, such as the passing of the stimulus plan.

The spikes, The Economist surmises, happen when people (including a handful of bloggers, politicians, and economists) notice the eerie similarities between real-life events — like the recent spate of sea pirate attacks — and the scenarios Rand described in her book.

As long as the halls of Congress don’t start ringing with the question “Who is John Galt?” let’s hope it’s just a case of life imitating art.

__________________________________________

I will further admit that I checked to see if there was an Atlas Shrugged movie so that I could pretend to read the book ( Costanzaaaaaaa!!!!! ). There is one coincidentally in pre-production now, giving credence to the implications above. And with Angelina Jolie in a starring role.

________________________________________

How many people think I should take up drinking again, so that I don't have the time for this sort of thing?

Lissa, I agree with your assesment of most US translations and indeed had very low hopes for ICA but it's pretty good. It doesn't have the same camp and odd humor that the original ICJ had. After all, who could be like Kaga? The man is an entity entirely unto himself!

Having said that though, the Iron Chefs are talented and interesting to watch and in some cases very funny. Alton Brown is a good moderator and the judges panel often includes Jeffrey Steingarden and Ted Allen who are entertaining in their own right. It's worth a watch - just not a comparrison because it's just not the same show.

The charm of Iron Chef (Japan) was how ridiculous it was, how very Japanese it was. I always liked the clearly poor translation of the judges, particularly the shy giggling "actresses". Maguro was oishi desu ne.

Why Foster? Oh like, bananas Foster? I'll assume that's the flaming dessert. He's such a macaronic image, it's hard to settle on a name. (I know I may have stretched the meaning of macaronic there.) Maybe I'll just stick a feather in his cap and call him Macaroni. Got that Kennedy thing going too. And that's how the process works. Thanks RayRay.

Lissa -- Bea Arthur was in "Amanda's", a remake of "Fawlty Towers". So far as IMDb indicates, the only attempted US remake of "Are You Being Served?" was "Beanes of Boston", which never made it past a pilot episode.

Last month a package from Amazon arrived with the first season of Maude. I'm not sure how many items are on Amazon, nor am I sure how out of all the items available that was the one we needed; however, that DVD did provide me with context for the orgins of "Good Times".

And, I can attest if you ever see Jimmy J.J. Walker perform his comedy live, he won't say "Dynomite!" during his set. I almost asked Ram's Head for my money back. Why that's almost as bad as going to see Fonzie and he refuses to say "Ayeeee"

Actually, Angela Lansbury was Laurence Harvey's mother in the original (1962) version of The Manchurian Candidate, even though she was only 3 years older. Lissa -- FYI, the original is on Turner Classic Movies this Saturday at 2:00 p.m. If you don't have cable, you should move the original up on your rental list. (I haven't seen the remake, but the original is superb.)

sigh. I have to get on my soap box and rant (quickly) about why a perfect piece of cinema is made and then someone feels the need to re-make it a few years later. The Manchurian Candidate in it's original black and white format is not only a great movie but especially eerie given that it was shelved because of the assasination of JFK shortly either pre or post dating it's release. The shadows and subtleties of the black and white film plus the pacing and drama of the film itself could never and should have never been re-created.

Lord, please let me be dead and gone before some moron decides to re-make To Kill a Mockingbird!

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About this blog

Richard Gorelick was appointed The Baltimore Sun's restaurant critic in September 2010. Before joining the paper staff fulltime, he contributed freelance criticism and features articles about food to area and regional publications. Along the way, he dispatched for short-distance trucking companies, shilled for cultural non-profits, and assisted in cognitive neurology research – never the subject, always the control.

He takes restaurants seriously but not himself, and his favorite restaurant is the one you love, too.